Here's Why All the People Freaking Out About Apple's Stock Crash Need To Take A Xanax

Eric Jackson
, ContributorI write about technology and media.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during an Apple product launch event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in March in San Francisco. (Getty Images via @daylife)

There has been an awful lot of angst and hyperventilating about Apple's (AAPL) stock price movements in the last few days.

"Apple has now entered BEAR Market territory. Down 11% from its high" was one tweet I saw yesterday.

It sort of goes with the territory, I guess, when you're the biggest company in the world with a market cap in excess of $600 billion that even small percentage moves in the price of the stock get outsized attention from critics.

Every small percentage drop in the stock means a change of billions of dollars in absolute terms. In fact, I even saw one loony post in Forbes asserting something like Steve Jobs would have fired Tim Cook over releasing maps and then seeing a subsequent destruction of $50 billion in Apple's value in the subsequent days.

Well, the same thing happens on the upside. Yesterday morning, Apple's stock briefly fell below $630/share around 11am eastern time. The Apple bears' negative tweets reached a fever pitch around that time. Over the next three hours, Apple "created" $12 billion in market cap value out of thin air with its rally.

That's 3 Research In Motion's (RIMM) for those keeping score at home -- another analogy Apple critics like to use when describing the company to make it seem as though it is trading at unsustainable bubble levels.

An 11% drop in Apple's stock from its all-time highs sounds like a lot -- until you actually use a little historical perspective to keep everything in context.

Consider this:

- August 2004: Apple's stock trades at $14. It shoots up to $45 by February 2005 and then declines 23% to $34 by May. Later, it goes to $80 by January 2006.

- January 2006: Apple's stock is at $85. Seven months later, it drops 42% to $50. And then by January 2007, It gets back to $92.

- December 2007: Apple is at $200. In February 2008, it drops 41% to $119. But by May, it is back to $188.

- August 2008: Just before Lehman fails, Apple's stock trades to $176. Three months later, it drops 53% to $82. And yet 10 months later, it gets back to its August 2008 highs.

- December 2009: Apple is trading at $211. One month later, it drops 9% to $192. And 10 months after that it reaches $317.

- November 2010: Apple is now at $308. It then rises to $360 by March 2011. Three months after that, it drops 11% to $320.